Carmina

Catullus

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.

  1. Yet if haply conjoined the same with elm as a husband,
  2. Tends her many a hind and tends her many a herdsman:
  3. Thus is the maid when whole, uncultured waxes she aged;
  4. But whenas union meet she wins her at ripest of seasons,
  5. More to her spouse she is dear and less she's irk to her parents.
  6. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!
Youths and Damsels
  1. But do thou cease to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing,
  2. Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father,
  3. Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing.
  4. Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents!
  5. Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother,
  6. Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others,
  7. Who to the stranger son have yielded their dues with a dower!
  8. Hymen O Hymenaeus: Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!
  1. O'er high deep seas in speedy ship his voyage Atys sped
  2. Until he trod the Phrygian grove with hurried eager tread
  3. And as the gloomy tree-shorn stead, the she-god's home, he sought
  4. There sorely stung with fiery ire and madman's vaguing thought,
  5. Share he with sharpened flint the freight wherewith his form was fraught.
  6. Then as the she-he sensed limbs were void of manly strain
  7. And sighted freshly shed a-ground spot of ensanguined stain,
  8. Snatched she the timbrel's legier load with hands as snowdrops white,
  9. Thy timbrel, Mother Cybele, the firstings of thy rite,
  10. And as her tender finger-tips on bull-back hollow rang
  11. She rose a-grieving and her song to listening comrades sang.
  12. "Up Gallae, hie together, haste for Cybele's deep grove,
  13. Hie to the Dindymnean dame, ye flocks that love to rove;
  14. The which affecting stranger steads as bound in exile's brunt
  15. My sect pursuing led by me have nerved you to confront
  16. The raging surge of salty sea and ocean's tyrant hand
  17. As your hate of Venus' hest your manly forms unmann'd,
  18. Gladden your souls, ye mistresses, with sense of error bann'd.
  19. Drive from your spirits dull delay, together follow ye
  20. To hold of Phrygian goddess, home of Phrygian Cybebe,
  21. Where loud the cymbal's voice resounds with timbrel-echoes blending,
  22. And where the Phrygian piper drones grave bass from reed a-bending,
  23. Where toss their ivy-circled heads with might the Maenades
  24. Where ply mid shrilly lullilooes the holiest mysteries,
  25. Where to fly here and there be wont the she-god's vaguing train,
  26. Thither behoves us lead the dance in quick-step hasty strain."
  27. Soon as had Atys (bastard-she) this lay to comrades sung
  28. The Chorus sudden lulliloos with quivering, quavering tongue,